Why Can You Play So Well One Set And Then Play Horribly The Next?

First, a little confession.

When it comes to peak sports performance, I'm not a huge believer in the theory that says that all one has to do is to just relax.

If that's all it took then, hey, just relax in your favorite way, then go out and shoot scratch in golf, or play high level tennis for 3 sets.

It's not that easy!

I believe that the key to playing consistent high level tennis is to master muscle memory of high level stroke production. Then, when you have total confidence that you've got the swings grooved, you can just relax and let it go.

You see the relaxation comes after creating muscle memory of the right patterns.

I believe that proper stroke production in tennis is a beautiful dance of all the various parts of the body moving in a natural and efficient rhythm. Now, there may be many different ways to acquire the muscle memory, but that's a different issue to be discussed at a later time.

So, in my opinion, if at times you play really well and hit the ball beautifully and other times your strokes fall apart, it's not neccessarily mental.

It's quite possible that your muscle memory is failing and you've gotten out of synch. This is when I think you have to have cues on each stroke that guide you back to that place where your rhythm returns.

The cues could be anything but they have to get you back to the right muscle memory. You may tell yourself to turn your shoulders as far as you can on your groundstrokes when you're struggling. Or, maybe holding your weight back a little longer on the serve before exploding into it.

I'll be discussing this issue more in later blogs as it fascinates me.

And, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Glenn Sheiner M.D. - author of The Top Selling Tennis Tactics Ebook guaranteed to make you a smarter tennis player and take your tennis to the next level. Also, check out a little about tennis history here Tennis history

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